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Announcing the online publication of Jalan: A Journal of Asian Liberation

Posted on January 2nd, 2009 in Recommended Reading

Jalan Journal is an independent journal written by a multiracial collective of activists who work toward the liberation of Asian peoples from the forces of racism, empire and neo-colonialism.

Asians are Pakistani, Iraqi, Afghani, Korean, Cambodian, Chinese, Palestinians and countless other faces. We are gender-bending men and women, queer and straight. We are fierce and loving. We are what the racists fear. Many of us are also here in the United States. This journal seeks to promote discussion and provide linkages, to remember the past so as to build for the future. We hope to discuss the struggles of Asian-American peoples in the United States from an anti-racist and democratic perspective in order to build solidarity among our communities and with working folks in Asia. We combat the historical and political roots of the model minority myth that has functioned to divide Asians from other working class people of color, both in the US and internationally. We also critically oppose the statist and oppressive versions of pan-Asian liberation found in Maoism, Bandungism and the Japanese empire of yesteryear. Today, a new vision is our only option, nourished by everyday struggles for freedom and democracy that Asian peoples wage in the family, at work, in their neighborhoods, and schools. From the relentless Intifadas of Palestinians pushing up against apartheid, to the jam-packed streets of the 2005 Hong Kong WTO protests exploding with fierce South Korean farmers, Filipino activists and Japanese anarchists, we are in action. A new society all around us is breaking out! (read more from our Mission statement)

Our contents in this first issue:

Editorials:
* Asians Against White Supremacy: On the origins of anti-Asian racism and how we have fought back
* Stop Dividing the Korean nation: A vision of unity from below

Articles:
* Rebel Desis of the Hip Hop generation
* ¡Ya Basta! Reflections on Asian and Latino workers in the immigrant rights movement
* Retrieving an Asian American Anarchist Tradition

Book Review:
* Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution